The Beard of Avon

'HEY, WHATEVER worketh!" a character exclaims in Amy
Freed's The Beard of Avon, and that glib anachronism exemplifies
the show's approach. One of the most widely produced new plays this
season, Beard is making its local bow at American Conservatory
Theater. The play dives headfirst into the knotty "authorship
question" behind Shakespeare's plays, asking whether a raw, rhyming
lad from Stratford named Will Shakspere could truly have created some
of the most immortal literature ever written  or whether he
had more than a little help from his friends.

In Freed's light comic fantasy, Will (Matthew Boston) is an amateur
rural poet who burns with big dreams and feels trapped in his marriage
to the older Anne Hathaway (René Augesen). Seduced by a band
of traveling players, Will tries his luck in London in the company
of Heminge (Charles Lanyer) and Condel (Charles Dean). Confined to
minor roles, often literally that of a "spear shaker," he
learns his craft and is ready to pounce when very frustrated playwright
Edward de Vere (Marco Barricelli), the 17th earl of Oxford, decides
he needs a "beard" to go slumming and put his work on the
stage.

Naturally, complications ensue as the play's own authorship questions
become increasingly tangled and as Anne comes to visit London (disguised,
of course). But although Beard's historical speculations are
offered with intelligence and humor, it settles for some awfully superficial
conjectures on the true nature of "Shakespeare" and his
work. Freed's Will is filled with appealing longing, but his growth
over the course of the play seems attributable more to rhetoric than
experience. The play also runs out of story in a thin, repetitious
second act, substituting farcical energy for comedic resonance.

In her previous plays Freed proved an enthusiastic debunker of artistic
myths, particularly in the lives of literary artists, but she usually
did it with more heft and insight than appear here. Beard clearly
aspires to little more than dessert status, despite occasionally casting
an eye in the direction of a main course. Particularly with Shakespeare
in Love  a comedy that handled the question of how a writer
becomes great with much more dramatic acuity  in memory yet
green, Beard comes up wanting, a low-cal substitute for the
real thing.

Redesign

Frivolity seems to be the prevalent theatrical style this New Year,
and the ever stylish Noel Coward is once again in perfect tune. Still,
Design for Living remains one of his thorniest comedies, a
seeming confection that hides razor blades in its froth. Who better
to send them slashing than director John Fisher, who's sure to leave
no delicate double entendre uncut? In this Theatre Rhinoceros production,
Fisher updates the play from 1932 to the present, introduces Coward
songs as Greek choruses between scenes, and renders the main characters'
bisexual ménage à trois in no uncertain terms.

In oh-so-liberated San Francisco the joke, of course, is that more
than a few people may still have issues with a bisexual trio, perhaps
no less so than audiences of 70 years ago. But ironically this most
"shocking" of Coward's comedies winds up seeming tame in
Fisher's production. All the ass slapping and nipple grabbing here
seems like a facile reassurance, sexual slapstick that diverts attention
from the complicated, difficult relationships at the play's core.

Even Fisher's use of the songs as an awkward Brechtian device seems
calculated to distance. Whenever the play gets too hot Fisher invariably
steamrolls the complexity with a joke. His decision to Americanize
things also makes mincemeat of Coward's language. Jayson Matthews's
Otto has a particularly hard time of it. Will Springhorn Jr.'s Leo
fares a bit better but remains one-dimensional. Only Doug Holsclaw's
flamingly closeted Ernest and Jenny Lord's radiantly edgy Gilda nail
both the comedy and the painful ambivalence that make the play dangerous
and worthwhile.